


Quantum Computation and the Physics of Entanglement

by notbeloved07



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Geeky, Hacking, Journal Reviewing, M/M, Mentions of homophobia, Pulled all stops on the geekiness and not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 12:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbeloved07/pseuds/notbeloved07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/16524.html?thread=36700556#t36700556">this prompt</a>:</p><p>Fresh out of college and before becoming CEO of Stark Industries, Tony Stark publishes a paper on the scientific principles behind one of his inventions. Bruce Banner is a referee for the paper and knocks Tony down a few pegs on the physics-related parts of the paper.</p><p>Tony is affronted, but also a little awestruck by the intellectual level this Banner guy is operating on. He arranges to meet Banner, and they argue passionately about the science in Tony's paper. By the end of the argument they're both kind of ridiculously attracted to each other.</p><p>Bonus: Rhodey, fellow MIT graduate, is a co-author of the paper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quantum Computation and the Physics of Entanglement

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to Prof. Peter Shor, Prof. Raymond Laflamme, and Prof. Alexei Kitaev, brilliant quantum computer scientists whose work I am abusing for the sake of fic.
> 
> Edit: Sorry for the title change. I am terrible at titles.

7 June 1993, shortly after Tony Stark, age 18, became CEO of Stark Industries

 

There had to be a better way to stack the graphene, Tony thought to himself, putting his grapefruit spoon down and scribbling his calculations on a piece of paper. With a sheet just two atoms thick, he could already achieve reasonable efficiency in photovoltaic cells. If he could just find the right combination of TMDs--

"Hey Tony?" Rhodey asked from across the room. His friend and collaborator had been staying over for a few weeks before his first deployment as the two young MIT graduates wrapped up their research. Right now, Rhodey was checking his email on his laptop while Tony finished breakfast.

"Yeah?" Tony said, not looking up. Where was he? Oh, right. TMDs. He looked back at the data from the simulations of two stacked monolayers--MoS2 and graphene. He could push this into the lab already; it would be revolutionary even in its own right, but maybe if he--

"The Physical Review wrote back," Rhodey said.

"About?"

"About the quantum dot paper." 

"The one from ages ago?" Tony asked, though he couldn't deny that his curiosity was piqued.

"Ages?" Rhodey quirked an eyebrow. "We submitted it two weeks ago. Anyway, the referee liked it, said it was ground-breaking, and recommends it for publication with no major changes and a few minor suggestions. We should be good to go."

Tony got out of his seat and looked over his friend's shoulder. 

"Let me see," he said, commandeering the laptop and scrolling down. "Brilliant, ground-breaking, yadda, yadda... ah. Minor suggestions. There is a confusing typo in section two paragraph three, yeah whatever... it may be helpful to add a circuitry diagram for blah blah blah... In section three the proposed error correction could be done in just five qubits--wait what? That is _not_ a minor suggestion!"

Rhodey narrowed his eyes as he turned to look at his friend. "Uh, Tony? Isn't that more efficient than the lower bound? The one we _proved_ was best possible?"

"Yeah, dude, this guy has to be full of shit. There is no way that... Oh, damn!"

"What?"

"Look at his encoder. All he did was drop two of our qubits and use a quantum analogue of the Hamming distance. Our proof was for classical linear codes adapted to qubits; his is purely quantum. And this encoder is actually at the centre of--Rhodey are you seeing this?"

Rhodey was not. His attention was already on the fourth "minor suggestion".

"No, Tony are you seeing _this_? He says 'In the concluding paragraph of section three the authors suggest that quantum bits are inherently more error-prone than classical bits, because even the smallest perturbation causes decoherence. This is not strictly true; not all quantum properties are inherently error-prone. Fundamental groups, for example, are perturbation-independent.' He's right. Isn't he?"

"Yeah, but it's a pointless quibble. The relevant fundamental groups are all zero because in a punctured three-space--wait, hang on a second." Tony looked down at the graphene-based photovoltaic cell model he had scribbled on a sheet of paper.

"What?" Rhodey asked.

"Three dimensions. There's no reason the system has to be three dimensions. I was just thinking about that this morning--look, with nothing but graphite and tape, we can make a two-atom thick sheet of graphene. If we confine particles to a sheet and move them around, we pick up non-trivial π1..."

"And we could store data in the topological invariants," Rhodey realised. "Damn."

"Yeah," Tony agreed. "Who the fuck is this guy?"

"Seriously."

"That wasn't a rhetorical question. We should find out who this is."

"Tony, you know they can't tell us that. Confidentiality and all that."

"I wasn't suggesting asking," Tony said, stepping away from his spot behind Rhodey and turning on his own computer.

Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "If you're suggesting anything illegal, I don't want to know about it."

"Yeah, whatever." Tony pulled up his email.

Then, he frowned at his computer.

"What?" Rhodey asked.

"I didn't get the email. I could check _your_ email, of course--"

"Tony--"

"--but I'm the PI and corresponding author. The referee report should have been sent to me."

"Maybe they misread," Rhodey shrugged.

"No, it's in my spam box," Tony said, frowning even further. "My email marked it as spy-ware."

"So your anti-virus messed up," Rhodey said, not understanding Tony's annoyance.

"My anti-virus does not mess up. I'm going to read the source-code to this file."

"Suit yourself," Rhodey said, turning back to read the rest of the referee report.

Tony looked over the file for about three minutes before spotting the errant code.

"Uh, Rhodey?"

"Yeah?"

"There is actually spy-ware. And I think it was intentionally added by the referee who wrote this file."

"What!? Did he hack me?" Rhodey asked, closing the file and checking his task manager for any unfamiliar processes. The expression of shock on his face was almost comical.

"No," Tony laughed. "It's hard-coded to the NeXTSTEP operating system, which neither of us is running. Your dirty secrets are safe from this anonymous referee."

Rhodey glared at his friend. Then he frowned. "NeXTSTEP. The OS NeXT distributed?"

"Exactly. Good thing I'm already keeping tabs on NeXT--"

Rhodey blocked his own ears. "I said I didn't want to know!"

"--and I can pull up a list of people who bought their computers. How much do you want to bet that the editor--never mind. No need to bet. He's on the list."

"So he hacked our editor."

Tony grinned in response.

"What are you so happy about?"

"I'm flattered. Aren't you flattered? He liked our paper so much he hacked the editor's email just to find out who we are."

"You would take that as a compliment, wouldn't you?"

"Well, at this point, we have to return the favour, don't we? It would be impolite not to."

Rhodey rolled his eyes. "Just send me the pre-prints when it's published."

Tony hummed, his mind already working on how to get into the editor's account. He wouldn't send the editor an OS-specific trojan like the referee had. An inelegant hack like that was acceptable coming from a physicist, but a real engineer would do something platform independent, robust, and scalable.

 

*********************

8 June 1993, shortly after Bruce Banner, age 19, finished his first academic year of graduate school

 

Bruce tossed a forced smile at the night shift security guard as the latter did his midnight walk around the basement of LISE. One of the undergrads working with Bruce's advisor for the summer had quenched his liquid helium magnet yet again, rendering days of data worthless, not to mention losing thousands of dollars worth of technology. It was up to Bruce to file the paperwork for a new one. He tried to remember why he chose to go into experimental physics; he could be working with symplectic manifolds or algebraic varieties or any number of theoretical constructions that weren't tied to the price of helium and didn't arbitrarily go and _quench_ themselves.

But that wasn't quite fair. To be honest, Bruce loved experimental physics. He had labmates who respected his scientific opinions and an advisor who gave him nearly free reign of the lab and let him publish his own research as primary author, including one paper that propelled him to the forefront of the field so that even the Physical Review asked him to referee despite his junior status as a graduate student.

He had just about wrapped up the paperwork explaining what had happened with the magnet when his computer screen went blank. Bruce groaned. A blank screen of death was not exactly what he needed at the moment. He moved to restart the computer when suddenly text appeared across the screen.

` **Playing hard to get?** `

Bruce blinked, wondering whether his eyes were playing tricks on him. He looked around the room and back at the screen. It seemed real enough.

` **???**` , he tentatively wrote back.

` **No, don't give me that. You sent a trojan to the editor's email. I know you found my contact information.** `

Oh. _Oh,_ Bruce realised what was going on. He had refereed an amazing paper on quantum dots and just _had_ to know who had written it. While writing a trojan, he had entertained a passing fancy of meeting the brilliant mind behind the paper, but his hopes were dashed when he learned that the primary author of the paper was none other than Anthony Stark, whom a quick internet search confirmed to be the son of Howard Stark, genius, billionaire, WWII hero.

` **Anthony Stark?**` He wrote, holding his breath in anticipation.

` **Call me Tony.** `

Bruce's jaw dropped and he couldn't help the lightness in his stomach. For all that he couldn't help his curiosity regarding the identity of the author, he never expected the author to return the favour. To confirm that he was not dreaming, Bruce pinched himself hard in the inner wrist and mentally calculated a few Clebsch-Gordan coefficients. He was awake. He looked back at the screen. There was more text.

` **I read your "minor suggestions". We should discuss. Are you free this afternoon?** `

Nope, definitely dreaming. He counted up in prime numbers on his fingers in binary up to nineteen (19 = thumb, ring finger, and pinky) and then dug his right thumb nail into his left thumb nail-bed. Neither exercise woke him up. 

`**How are you doing this?**` Bruce asked.

` **A gentleman doesn't hack and tell. Does Berry Line at 3PM work for you? Alternately, I could fly you to NYC for more authentic fro-yo.** `

Bruce stared at the screen. A moment too long.

` **So? Quantum computing over frozen yoghurt. Yes or no?** `

`**There are standard channels for us to communicate while preparing your paper for publication.**` Bruce wrote back, though it was clear to all parties that he was merely stalling.

` **Like hacking editors' emails?** `

Okay, that was actually a fair point. And really, why was Bruce stalling anyway? Here was a chance to work with Tony Stark, after all, and even if it wasn't, even if this was some elaborate joke, the yoghurt shop the hacker proposed was just outside of Harvard Yard; it wouldn't hurt to check.

` **Berry Line is good. See you at 3?** `

` **That wasn't so hard, was it?** `

With that, the text on his screen disappeared and his terminal came back up as if it never left. Bruce checked his task manager for recent activity and his kernel for tampering. He was almost relieved when he didn't find anything out of the ordinary--from what he heard about Stark's antics, the clean hack was more evidence that he was really dealing with Tony Stark. Though he tried not to get his hopes up, he couldn't help the pleasant feeling in his chest as he wrapped up the paperwork and headed home.

 

*********************

 

The frozen yoghurt joint was just across Harvard Yard from LISE and it wouldn't take more than ten minutes to walk there, but at twenty minutes to three, Bruce was having trouble concentrating and there was an undergrad compiling the data already anyway, so he put his things away and headed out. Not wanting to arrive too early, however, he took a longer route there, taking a moment to watch the street performers break-dancing in The Pit and the protesters demanding open service as opposed to the new don't-ask-don't-tell policy[1] in the works. Cambridge could be so adorably liberal sometimes.

Even taking the long route and dallying around The Pit, Bruce still got to the shop with five minutes to spare. He was surprised to find Stark already there. The young engineer was wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans and he was leaning with his back to the wall and one foot propped up on it. In his hands, he was playing with something that looked like it could have been a mobile phone.

"You're early," Bruce said, walking up to him.

"Fashionably," Tony replied, slipping his mobile into his pocket and turning to walk next to Bruce for the last few steps up to the door.

When they were inside the store and standing in line to order, Bruce suddenly realised he hadn't planned this beyond the is-it-really-Stark phase, and didn't know what to say. Fortunately, Stark was more than happy to get to the point.

"Your five qubit QEC code was inspired," Tony said. "But you weren't serious about that liquid crystal solvent were you?"

And just like that they jumped into talking about the paper. Tony was right that the solvent Bruce had proposed wouldn't work at the temperature required to maintain the spin couplings, but changing the atomic base of the five qubits, they could make the couplings more robust to temperature. From there, they moved on to feasibility of topological quantum computer, properties of graphene, and representations of braid groups. 

They argued until dusk and by the time the tiny yoghurt joint closed down and kicked them out, their table was covered with paper and paper bags they had taken from the counter when they ran out of paper to write on. There was also a copy of Weinberg they borrowed from an undergrad neither of them knew, who had said that they could keep it for the night and return it to the front desk of Quincy, but that if they got any fluids on it, they were getting her a new one. It seemed like an odd thing to say, but to be honest, Bruce wasn't really paying attention by that point.

"I should probably go return that girl's book," Bruce said regretfully, just outside the shop. "This was... um." Bruce had no idea what to say. Amazing? Brilliant? Probably things Tony heard all the time.

"Yeah, it certainly was," Tony laughed. "You can keep the book. I already ordered her a new one," he said with a wave of his mobile phone. "Overnight delivery."

"What? Why?" Bruce frowned checking the book for yoghurt stains. "We didn't get it dirty."

"She thinks we're having lab sex sprawled across her book right now. I have no problem letting her keep that fantasy."

Bruce choked. And was decidedly not assaulted with mental images of lab sex with Tony Stark.

"Of course," Tony continued, "I wouldn't actually have sex on top of physics textbooks--that would just be disrespectful, not to mention uncomfortable. So if that's what you've been fantasising about, I'm going to have to say that's one fantasy I won't indulge." He smirked. "One of very few."

"Should you be joking about these things?" Bruce sputtered when he finally managed to talk.

"What, did you think I was a prude about sex? You've never browsed the tabloids, have you?"

Up until then, neither Bruce nor Tony had acknowledged Tony's background in any way, but since the floodgates were open, Bruce didn't feel bad asking about it.

"Doesn't your company work closely with the military? Last I checked they're not too accepting of queers."

"You know, it's adorable how idealistic you grad students are."

Bruce bristled at being called 'adorable' by someone who was barely an adult. Even if Bruce wasn't much older.

"Most people don't let ideology get in the way of business," Tony continued. "They're not going to stop buying from me just because of my... what do they call them? Oh yes, _indiscretions_ , just like I'm not going to stop selling to them just because some of them are homophobes."

"Oh." That was one way of seeing it.

"Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yes. Dinner? There's a nice restaurant a few blocks that way," Tony pointed along Mass Ave.

Bruce was pretty sure dinner was not what they were talking about. But Tony was looking at him all hopeful and a little shy and focused on Bruce as if he were more fascinating than non-abelian anyons and Bruce briefly wondered if they weren't playing the game he thought they were playing, but then he remembered the fluttering in his stomach when Tony first asked him to frozen yoghurt and realised he knew what game they were playing all along.

"I could do dinner," Bruce said. Tony grinned.

**Author's Note:**

> [1] In 1993, Clinton implemented a policy called Don't Ask Don't Tell, which said that the military would not ask its employees whether they were gay, so that gay people could serve as long as they were in the closet. This was a step towards gay rights at the time, but it was not enough to appease Harvard, which did not allow ROTC programs on campus (though Harvard students could participate via MIT) until the policy was replaced by open service in 2011.
> 
> Would there be interest in a sequel that involves Afghanistan and/or the Hulk? I've been thinking about writing an AU where Bruce and Tony knew each other before the Hulk and Afghanistan and deal with these things together but I don't know what the reception would be.  
> Edit: Thanks for the feedback! Working on a sequel, but no promises.


End file.
